“We hope to have a broad coalition from European countries, and also maybe the United States,” Dror Feiler, an Israeli-Swedish musician and artist who lives in Stockholm – and one of the organizers behind the flotilla – told The Jerusalem Post on Monday. “We would like it to be double the size of the last flotilla, with at least a dozen ships and more than thousand people.”

The IDF is closely tracking the planned flotilla and is preparing for a wide-range of scenarios, including the possibility that due the large number of ships, it will need to stop the flotilla far from Israel’s shores. Feiler said the large number of ships was due to the unprecedented number of people who wanted to sail to Gaza.

“The Israeli army can stop 12 or 50 ships if it wants,” he said. “There are so many ships since so many people want to get together to stop the siege, which is a collective punishment of the people of Gaza and is unacceptable.”

The last flotilla to Gaza was stopped by the navy at the end of May.
During the operation, nine Turkish passengers aboard the Mavi Marmara passenger ship were
killed in clashes with commandos from the navy’s Flotilla 13.

The coalition behind the new blockade-busting effort includes the
Turkish IHH and the Free Gaza Movement, both of which were involved in
the May flotilla. It is demanding “an immediate and complete lifting of
the closure, including a lifting of the travel ban as well as the ban on
exports from Gaza.”